Brooke Bowers sets a table at Searsucker at the corner of 5th Ave. and Market in downtown San Diego on Thursday, May 12, 2011. (Photo by K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Tom Eads (left), a partner with the new restaurant Wang’s North Park, meets contractors at the old J.C. Penney building. The Chinese restaurant will occupy 12,000 square feet on the ground floor. It hopes to sublease one of the top floors.

Tom Eads (left), a partner with the new restaurant Wang’s North Park, meets contractors at the old J.C. Penney building. The Chinese restaurant will occupy 12,000 square feet on the ground floor. It hopes to sublease one of the top floors.

The old Woolworth building in North Park is vacant, but talks are under way with a developer. K.C. Alfred • U-T photos

The old Woolworth building in North Park is vacant, but talks are under way with a developer. K.C. Alfred • U-T photos

Tom Eads (left) of Wang’s North Park meets with contractor Ron Rice in the old J.C. Penney building about plans to redevelop the four-story, 40,000-square-foot building in North Park. K.C. Alfred • U-T photos

Tom Eads (left) of Wang’s North Park meets with contractor Ron Rice in the old J.C. Penney building about plans to redevelop the four-story, 40,000-square-foot building in North Park. K.C. Alfred • U-T photos

For three years, residents and business owners in the funky, tight-knit community of North Park have had to eye the vacant former J.C. Penney building, a four-story, 40,000-square-foot brick-and-mortar monster that sprawls empty and useless in the heart of the neighborhood.

And, just a few blocks east along University Avenue, lurks another vacant, boarded behemoth, the two-story, 15,600-square-foot former Woolworth’s department store.

“Emotionally, it’s been difficult to see these buildings vacant because they are so large, and have such incredible visual presence,” said Elizabeth Studebaker, executive director of North Park Main Street, the agency overseeing that neighborhood’s redevelopment.

“Empty is very noticeable,” said Studebaker. “It has a psychological impact on other retailers, and the shoppers who come here to spend their time and money.”

From neighborhoods dotted with Mom-and-Pop shops to huge shopping malls nestled near freeways, retailers and commercial landlords have been grappling with the one-two punch of a moribund economy and a growing consumer shift to shopping online.

And it has proved a particularly deadly combination for some retailers with super-sized footprints. Most recently, the bookstore chain Borders, faced with competition from Amazon and the nascent e-book market, announced it would shutter 226 locations, including three stores in San Diego County.

Nationally, nearly 1,800 retail and restaurant establishments announced expected closings in the first quarter of 2011, down from 2,800 in the same quarter of 2010, according to a report on retail real estate supply conditions by the International Council of Shopping Centers and PNC Real Estate Research.

But while the number of businesses being shuttered dropped markedly, the total amount of retail space being vacated increased 31 percent from year to year, due largely to the sheer size of the stores being shuttered.

In San Diego, 133,516 square-feet of retail space was expected to become vacant because of announced store closures, up 354 percent from the same quarter in 2010. That placed San Diego 36th among 175 U.S. metro areas in terms of anticipated vacant space from store closures, due largely to the closures of the three Borders stores.

Yet relief from those gaping, empty spaces may be on the way. Real estate experts say there has been little new retail construction since the economy first crashed in 2008, and as businesses slowly recover, they are expanding and absorbing vacancies.

Case in point: resilient little North Park.

Last week, the J.C. Penney building’s new tenants, Wang’s North Park, began a remodel of the building at 3029 University.

The planned upscale Chinese restaurant, a sister operation to Wang’s in the Desert, a successful Palm Springs restaurant, is due to open by September. The 12,000-square-foot restaurant will occupy the ground floor, and the restaurant’s owners hope to sublease a top floor to another business.